The first few weeks of a new year are usually the perfect time for looking ahead and making plans for the future. With the frantic festive season over, most of us have a bit of time to meditate on what the new year might bring and what we might want to achieve.
The start of 2016 looks very different to how I envisaged it would this time last year. Rewind to post-Christmas 2014 and I was feeling optimistic that my husband was getting over his illness, that we were getting back into a normal family routine and we would be able to plan things together for the first time in two years. I even wrote a blog post which I cringe at now, listing all the things I wanted to do in 2015: learn to crochet, see more live music, spend more time with friends - not more time in hospitals.
We were on the verge of booking a family holiday when my husband fell ill again a few weeks into the new year. Roger was admitted to intensive care in January and spent the following months in hospital while the doctors tried to work out what had gone wrong. A few months later, in March, he was diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer. To our absolute shock and distress, he passed away four months later.
I guess you could say 2015 has not been the year we all wanted it to be. Little did I know last Christmas that the next one would be spent without Roger. That the next time New Year came along, I would be sitting here writing about how things have changed so drastically for our family.
When something so major happens, it definitely changes how you think, and making resolutions and setting goals for the new year just seems, well, rather unrealistic. Life can throw any curveball your way and you just have to get on and deal with it - what else is there to do? It has meant that this year, I'm shying away from making any promises for 2016. I'd much rather try to hope that our family can move forward as Roger would have wanted, to always remember him and the love we had and to learn to live with the hand we have been dealt. To learn to live without him.
I hope that I can try to help our children, who are six and two, understand a little more about what has happened, and try to allow them to feel sad, angry and upset just as I so often do.
I've come to realise that they show their feelings in such different ways. My son, the eldest, gets angry and tearful over little things, but I have to try to remember it's more likely an expression of the bigger picture. Something which can be really tricky to bear in mind when it leads to a shouting match over getting ready for school at 7am!
My daughter, the little one, talks about her dad most days and so explaining to her where he has gone is a whole different ball game. Just the other day she sat looking at photos of him on my iPad, and said: "Oh I wish my daddy would come back". All I can say to her is yes, so do I. I wish he could come back too.
This year will be a year of adjustments for all of us. For healing, and for hope too, as we try to work out our new reality and life as a little family of three.
We might plan a holiday - wouldn't it be great to take the little one abroad for the first time? We definitely need to go on our first caravan weekend, as that was Roger's little project which we have yet to use. I'd like to spend more weekends away with friends and with our family, and try to book in the things which will inevitably keep me sane.
Our goals may be smaller and simpler than most this year, but if there's one thing that 2015 has taught us it's not to expect too much, just to make the most of the moments you have and remember that time is so very precious.
If that's something we can remember into 2016, then I reckon we are on the right lines.
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Guest post: "In 2016, we're learning to live without my husband"
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MumsnetGuestPosts · 04/01/2016 12:30
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